Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Miranda
Oh God.
Oh God.
I am sitting on the tile floor of the men’s locker room with his towel in both hands, Grayson Wolfe is standing directly above me, and I am looking up at every single inch of him from the worst possible angle.
He is very, very big.
I have seen a lot of men in hospital gowns. I have seen a lot of men without them. I am a nurse. The human body is not a mystery to me.
Except apparently it is, because I cannot move. I cannot look away. I cannot do anything except sit on this cold floor with his towel clutched to my chest like some kind of trophy I did not ask for.
“Cover yourself!” It comes out as something between a gasp and a shriek as I scramble to my feet. “Right now. Cover yourself!”
“With what, exactly?” His voice is pure amusement. “You’re holding my towel hostage.”
I look down.
The terrycloth is crumpled in both fists, clutched against my chest like I took it on purpose. My face somehow gets hotter. I turn, throwing it over my shoulder at him without looking and hear it land somewhere behind me.
“There. Fixed. I’m leaving.”
I take one step.
My sneaker hits a wet patch of tile.
The floor rushes up again, and I pitch forward this time, arms flying out, bracing for the impact of cold, hard ground.
It doesn’t come. A hand shoots out and catches me around the waist, hauling me back, and I crash into a wall of warm, solid muscle with enough force to knock every useful thought clean out of my head.
I grip his forearms and try to remember how breathing works.
Then I realize the towel is still on the floor somewhere behind us.
I go completely still.
He is still very, very big.
Stop thinking about it, I order myself, but the firm order is absolutely useless because the more I try not to think about it, the more my brain circles back around to what I just saw from the floor.
This is not good. This is not good at all.
“What are you thinking about?” His voice is low, right beside my ear, a teasing edge to his voice. “You’ve gone very quiet.”
“Nothing.” I swallow. “I’m not thinking.”
“Really?” he asks mockingly. “Are you sure? You wouldn’t happen to be having any inappropriate thoughts about me, would you?” One of his arms is banded around my waist, and the other trails slowly up my chest to gently circle my neck.
“Of course not!” I splutter, but my face is burning. I can feel every inch of him pressed against me. “Let me go!”
He releases me immediately.
But before I can take even one step away from him, his hands find my shoulders, and he whirls me around, slamming me into the cool metal of a locker with a soft clang.
He fills my entire field of vision. Heat rolls off him in waves, that unnatural warmth of his surrounding me from every direction, and his amber eyes are dark and hooded and fixed entirely on my face.
He has still not picked up the towel.
“You came in here,” he says, his expression grievous. “You took off my towel.” His eyes hold mine. “I feel very exposed. Violated, even.”
“It was an accident,” I stammer. “Now let me go.”
“Was it?” His gaze moves over my face, settling on my lips, the corner of his own twitching. “It didn’t feel like an accident.”
“W-Well, it was!”
Why am I so flustered? Why can’t I just handle this like an adult?
His eyes are hooded, lingering on my lips.
“I-It’s not like I came in here planning this. You ran into me!” I’m still trying to argue my case, but he doesn’t seem interested in hearing it.
His mouth curves slowly. “So what are you going to do about it now?”
Nothing. The answer sitting in my head is nothing because my hands are flat against the locker behind me and my legs have decided to stop being reliable and my brain has completely stopped issuing useful instructions.
“Nothing,” I say tightly, trying to look everywhere but at him. “I gave you your towel back. It’s not my fault you don’t want to wear it.”
“Hmm.” He makes a thoughtful sound. “You threw it at me. But that’s beside the point. You’ve already seen me.”
“Along with a hundred other girls,” I sneer.
“So says you.” He smirks. “My point is”—he sets one hand against the locker beside my head, not touching me, just closing the distance between us—“you’ve seen all of me. Shouldn’t you return the favor?”
“No.” I narrow my eyes at him, hoping he can’t hear how loudly my heart is beating.
“Then something else.” His voice drops further, the teasing edge replaced by something that makes me press my legs together. “Just to even the scales.”
I know I should push him away. All I have to do is put my hands on his chest and push. He’ll let me go. I know he will.
So why can’t I lift my hands?
His eyes are on my lips as if he can’t look away for too long.
“What do you want?” I ask cautiously.
He looks thoughtful, his gaze moving over my face, and when he smiles again, it’s a wicked smile that would make the devil blush. “What are you willing to offer?”
He leans in. His breath ghosts across my lips, and my own breath stalls somewhere in my chest.
“Grayson.” His name comes out barely above a whisper, and I know the moment it leaves my mouth that it was a mistake.
His eyes go dark. “You can’t say my name like that.” The teasing in his voice is completely gone, replaced by something rougher. Hungrier. “It makes me want to bend you over the nearest flat surface.”
Heat moves through me, and I let out a small gasp. I can feel the trickle of wetness between my thighs.
He leans closer, his mouth finding the shell of my ear, and his laughter is soft and provoking. “You seem to like that idea, Nurse Carver.”
Before I can respond, his tongue licks along the rim of my ear, and my eyes flutter shut.
“Am I wrong?”
He’s doing this on purpose, I think dazedly. He’s not leaving me any room.
“I—”
His teeth close around the edge of my ear in a slow, gentle bite, and the shockwave that travels from my ear straight down my spine pulls a sound out of me that I will never in my life acknowledge making.
He laughs lightly right against my skin, like he felt exactly what that did to me. Like he knows precisely what is happening to my body right now and finds it deeply, deeply satisfying.
“Don’t even think about it.” I mean it to come out as a warning. It comes out barely above a breath, a helpless sound.
“But you already are.” He drags his mouth slowly along the line of my jaw, taking his time, in absolutely no hurry whatsoever, and one finger slides under my chin and tilts my neck back.
My hands search for purchase and instead find the hard contours of his stomach.
His lips curve against my jaw as he murmurs, “I can tell.”
His lips press to my neck just above my collarbone, and I stop pretending entirely.
My back arches slightly off the locker, my pulse is completely beyond my control, and I know that if he asked me right now, I would say yes.
To whatever he wanted. My underwear is soaked, and he has barely touched me.
His mouth travels upward, and then he seizes mine, and the world drops away.
There is nothing soft about it. His lips are firm, moving against mine with a pressure that parts them instantly, like he already knows exactly how to take me apart.
One hand fists in my hair, tilting my head back, and the other presses flat at the small of my back and hauls me in until every inch of me is flush against every inch of him.
I feel the heat of him everywhere at once, his chest against mine, his hips, his thighs, and I stop thinking.
I stop trying. My fingers curl into his shoulder, and when I kiss him back, he makes a low sound against my mouth that I feel deep in my stomach.
He tastes warm. Faintly sweet. His lips drag against mine slowly and then press back in harder, deeper, like he is testing what I will give him and finding that I will give him everything.
My fingers slide up to his jaw, and he angles his head.
The kiss changes, opens, his tongue tracing the seam of my lips before slipping past them, and the sound I make this time I cannot take back.
His hand in my hair tightens just slightly, holding me exactly where he wants me, and I let him.
I let him completely. My back is pressed fully into the locker, and his body is the only reason I am still standing.
I have never in my life been kissed like this, like I am something worth taking time over, like he has nowhere else to be and no intention of stopping.
“Miranda?”
We break apart like a live wire snapped.
The voice is small and a little whiny, coming from just around the corner.
We stare at each other, our faces flushed and our breathing hard.
“Miranda, where are you? I’m hungry.”
Grayson releases me and vanishes. One moment he is there, and the next he is gone around the far side of the lockers without a single sound, moving so fast that I can’t even keep track.
And I’m suddenly standing alone against the locker with my hair disheveled, my lips swollen, and my heart slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
I press both palms flat against the cool metal and try to breathe. Ethan shuffles around the corner wearing the long-suffering expression of someone who has been waiting an unreasonable amount of time and would like everyone to know it.
He looks up at me. “Where’s Dad? I’m really hungry.”
“He’s coming,” I say. My voice sounds almost normal. Right? “He’s just getting dressed.”
“He takes so long.” Ethan reaches up and takes my hand, small fingers wrapping around mine with absolute confidence, like it already belongs to him. “Can we get pizza again?”
He hasn’t noticed the state of disarray I’m in. Or maybe he doesn’t care.
“Let’s talk about it outside.” I start moving, steering him gently back around the corner, away from the lockers, away from all of it, into the cool dim corridor beyond. “Come on. Let’s get some air.”
He trots alongside me, already listing his preferred toppings with great seriousness, and I let him talk because it means I don’t have to.
I do not look back.